Few studies analyzed the diffusion of vocal alterations especially in childhood. Aim of our study was to quantify the numbers of subjects, in paediatric age, in which dysphonia was diagnosed in our department of Phoniatrics, during a period of 5 years, (January 2002-December 2006), and also to evaluate the influence of some potential risk factors. In the considered period it emerged that the di...

Developmental changes in synaptic properties may act to limit neural and behavioral plasticity associated with sensitive periods. This study characterized synaptic maturation in a glutamatergic thalamo-cortical pathway that is necessary for vocal learning in songbirds. Lesions of the projection from medial dorsolateral nucleus of the thalamus (DLM) to the cortical nucleus lateral magnocellular ...

The two mass model (2MM) as introduced by Ishizaka & Flanagan (1972) and simplified by Steinecke & Herzel (1995) describes many features of the vocal fold oscillation patterns [1,2]. Particularly, it was shown that a large variety of voice disorders may be explained by means of high-speed observations with subsequent interpretation by the 2MM. Laryngeal symmetry was identified as an important p...

Unilateral laryngeal paralysis leads to tension imbalance and hence to asynchronous movements between the two vocal folds during phonation. In the current study, a computational model of phonation that couples a two-mass model of the vocal folds with a Navier-Stokes model of the glottal airflow, has been used to examine the dynamics of vocal fold configurations with tension imbalance and its im...

Patients who have undergone thyroidectomy may have recurrent laryngeal nerve injury; until recently, Teflon injection was commonly used for vocal cord medialization. We present a case of a patient who underwent thyroidectomy who had significantly increased and unilateral (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in the neck, which was found to be localized to the left vocal cord by use of combined positr...

Kinematic analyses have demonstrated that the extent to which a songbird's beak is open when singing correlates with the acoustic frequencies of the sounds produced, suggesting that beak movements function to modulate the acoustic properties of the vocal tract during song production. If motions of the beak are necessary for normal song production, then disrupting the ability of a bird to perfor...

INTRODUCTION Psychogenic dysphonia is a functional disorder with variable clinical manifestations. OBJECTIVE To assess the clinical and vocal characteristics of patients with psychogenic dysphonia in a case series. METHODS The study included 28 adult patients with psychogenic dysphonia, evaluated at a University hospital in the last ten years. Assessed variables included gender, age, occupa...